Predators
by AKKON
Summary: She's not prey, she's a predator. It's all about hunting strategies.


**Akkon's basic receipt for writing: Take four words that start with 'A', three real and one imagined AoD scenes, stir well, _voilá_, this is what comes out.

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PREDATORS

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_**ASLEEP**_ _(Panther)_

She moves fast, full of purpose, in complete silence. Here and again she will stop, raise her head and sniff the air, as if trying to catch a scent, then edge forwards again, guided by animal instinct. A panther, maybe.

In a far corner of the ravine, a few _clochards_ are starting a fire, for comfort if not for warmth. The night is mild for this time of year, and the downpour from earlier has eased into a gentle drizzle. Breathing is difficult, the night is like a damp rag that clogs both mouth and nose, woven by rain and smog and the oppressing darkness.

He watches. Not close enough to be sure, but he imagines the ragged pants, the lungs contracting avidly for air. Each time she traverses the dubious light of the street lanterns -not often, she is careful to keep herself close to the shelter of walls and the shadows- her eyes glow yellow, reflecting the light and shutting it out. He thinks it might be the gleaming of fear. For all the feline poise of her movements, there is an abruptness, a starting quality to her advance that makes his mouth water.

He'd kill for a cigarette right now but he resists the urge. Patience is essential when tracking, and he has time, plenty of it. And even predators avoid confrontation if given a loophole to slip through. So he watches.

She pauses a second before climbing into the broken down carriage. Out of sight, not out of mind.

Hidden by the darkness, a helicopter flies by. They are still looking but soon they'll give up. A futile enterprise at this hour and in this weather. A fearful city swallowing its law-abiding, well-behaved citizens, and spitting out the vermin, the orphaned lost souls with more pressing worries than a monster on the loose.

One of the _clochards_ lifts his face, mumbles something unintelligible at the hooded figure passing by, begging for money or redemption.

Asleep, she looks less like a panther and more like a small, frightened creature, huddled under the scanty protection of old newspapers and cardboard bits. She looks too thin, too wet, her lids bluish with exhaustion. He almost feels sorry for her, and fights back an impulse to touch the pale cheek. What kind of dream would cross her tired brain if he did, the shadow of a black bird, fleetingly circling the edge of sleep.

She twitches in oblivion, a hand flexing momentarily on the spot where a pistol should be. Like all prey, the brain senses danger, but for now, the bodily shortcomings have the upper hand, and she sinks deeper into unconsciousness, lips parting in a soft protest.

He could watch forever, but she isn't going anywhere, and the craving for nicotine becomes almost too powerful to ignore.

As he climbs his way out, the rain has stopped altogether. A siren wails in the distance. Somewhere life is following its course, people dying, making love, mumbling in sleep. He'll find himself a nice, dry place, and he'll wait for more rain or the dawn to come.

He has plenty of time.

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**_ADRIFT_ **_(Shark)_

…_On l'a trouvé dans le désert, il avait ses beaux yeux ouverts, dans le ciel, passaient des nuages…_Edith Piaf sings on the radio. He's fairly sure it is _la_ Piaf. At this time of the morning, in this place, so far away from the true desert but so deserted all the same. What is a sparrow doing, in this sea of silence?

…_Il a montré ses tatouages, en souriant et il a dit…_He knows the song, it stirs in the depths of his memory as if waking from an uneasy slumber, and it's not Edith but his father's soft baritone modulating the next lines… _Montrant son cou: 'Pas vu, pas pris', montrant son coeur: 'Ici, personne' _…, and Marie would laugh, feign indignation, _"Personne?"_ and lean back into a man's embrace. _"Pas maintenant, l' enfant nous observe",_ and he would concentrate harder on the coloring book, purple ocean and green clouds and a huge round red bleeding splotch for a sun.

There's no real need for him to look up when she enters, but he does, because he's been dying to see her eyes. She hesitates, casting glances around her like fishing lines, which is kind of funny after her resolute entrance, and he lowers his own eyes to his paper. Like all prey, she's well attuned to every shift of the air (every ripple in the water), and for now, all he wants to do is watch.

As she talks to the barkeeper, he fixes her with unmasked hunger, assessing bone and muscle, and the spot on the nape where teeth are most likely to sink easily into flesh, sweet blood. The voices rise and ebb in predictable secrecy. She's shaped like an hourglass, the ultimate male fantasy, but her back is taut with repressed anger. If he touched, it would probably bristle against his hand like a cat's.

…_Il ne savait pas… Je lui pardonne…_ wails the sparrow of Paris, heartbreakingly. There's no such thing as forgiveness.

She stops by his table on her way out, as an afterthought, and he makes a dismissive gesture aimed at no one (he doesn't want to hear her voice, or not yet) and no, she doesn't growl or anything, just glides on by radiating coldness, lets the door fall close behind her with a bang, a final statement.

Her eyes are not panther-yellow, but brown. Brown, brown, brown. He finds it fitting.

He sips at his wine and toys with the idea of shooting the barman.

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**_ABLAZE_ **_(Diving Swan)_

It's a sunset like in a postcard, muted pinks and oranges and a hint of indigo, and it's breathtaking but then, it's only pollution that causes this faded effect.

He lights up his umpteenth cigarette. He should go easy on the stuff -blood pressure, heart failure, the Surgeon General warns, yadda yadda. Oh, and the big C. It tastes like heaven.

Once he got horribly drunk in a bar called _Au chien qui fume_. Slightly better than calling a bar Café Metro, in an appalling display of unimaginativeness, but the wine was just as bad. And he's never seen a dog smoke, anyway.

This is the moment the world chooses to explode, and out of a roaring fireball she's reborn with singed wings. The after waves of heat lick at his eyelashes, but he doesn't blink, careful not to miss any of the single frames that flow into such beautiful continuity.

Propelled by burning air and her own momentum, she's thrown overboard, missing the water and landing heavily -but the world is still mute, awed by this outrageous intrusion at afternoon's calmness- on the planks of a _bateau-mouche_. Smoke rises from her slumped shape in swirly patterns. She coughs twice and curls into a tight half moon of shivering flesh.

His cigarette lands in the water. He straightens, watching it wobble up and down on the small waves. It'll never make it to the sea. It will disintegrate first.

Maybe he's seen enough, and is eager to start moving. Dusk deepens, full of gunpowder, and anticipation, and barking dogs.

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**_AKIN_ **_(Predators)_

She halts before the open area, wary of the silence and the absence of cover. She is a shattered image, caught and split into a thousand enemies among the masks and terracotta figures behind glass.

He knows and she knows that he knows that she knows, this endless repetition, and someone has to move and no one wants to be first. But she's close to escape and the dangers behind are -perhaps, perhaps they aren't- too compelling, and she'll take a risk, in spite of all the instinct's ringing bells (watch out, there's a deeper, colder shadow lurking close, you're entering its domain) and now he sends his message, a long-tailed comet, a sharp blade.

Turning to decipher it is a mistake, recognizable even before he closes in for the kill, a bigger or meaner animal, but still respectful of a prey's determination.

If he touches, skimming the alert skin of her arm towards the futile gun, it's only because he's been watching too long, playing with possibility until contact, touch, has become logical and unavoidable. And she's tense, of course she is, cocked-off and ready to dart, but he imagines she's sensing all the same this unspoken agreement, a kind of recognition triggered by the gliding of planes of flesh upon each other.

He would make it last forever, he likes her frozen and still as she's never been these times before. But now she's wide awake, and he presses the barrel harder against her neck, tugging at her backpack to retrieve what he hasn't earned. This is the wild, ruled by different laws.

And when she spins around -self preservation turned obsolete by the sheer outrage of this affront, almost, almost catching him by surprise- it is as though the brain had finally processed the information that skin already owned. They can admire their own true shape in the other's reflective eyes, and a gun in the middle doesn't matter much.

Or becomes an invitation, teasing, mocking, as he retreats, step by step. The blade eases itself off its embedding, marking the path to his hand. She doesn't utter a sound, nor does he, but then, they wouldn't speak the language of men, but that of wild beasts, with menacing roars and soft purrs of abandoned pleasure.

Maybe they'll find out later, or never. Now they're running, both, from the bullets of the hunter, and even while he's keeping her at arm's length, rightly assessing the consequences of letting her get too close, he's grinning at her with pointed teeth, daring her to come and touch the fire.

Which she will. Oh, she will.

_(…See me burn…)_

**Finis**

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**A/N: Yes, I agree. It is an odd little piece. Most of you have already seen and commented on it, in, well, somewhere else. But I'm posting it here because I want to keep all my babies under one roof, sort of.**

**As for the French terms I used. They're excerpts from a French _chanson_, "Mon légionnaire". A lot of chansonniers have interpreted it, but the version I used is sung by Edith Piaf, aka "The sparrow of Paris".**

**And now, the translation:**

_**My legionary** _

…_We met in the desert, his beautiful eyes were open, clouds were passing through the sky…_

…_He showed me his tattoos, and smiled and said, pointing at his neck "Not seen, not taken", pointing at his heart "Here, nobody"…_

…_He didn't know… I forgive him._

**_Clochard_**: tramp

_**Bateau-mouche**: _typical boats on the Seine

_**Au chien qui fume**: _a well-known Parisian bar, in English it would be something like « Ye olde smoking dog »


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